Refwatch – Chelsea Vs. Arsenal (29/10/2011 – 12:45)

Good morning stat-fans and welcome to RefWatch… apologies for the lack of RefWatch last EPL match day – we woz being repressed – but I did do one and not only was it astoundingly accurate – it was also really very witty.

So what do we have here then… another non-3pm game? I would say that this is the stand out fixture of the day with high exposure – so let’s hope it can work for us this time eh!? Anyone know what the odds are?

Tell you what – I’ll check… as it stands at the moment Asian Bookie tells me that Chelsea are giving one i.e. the Asian Handicap is 1 goal against Chelsea as the bookies at the moment reckon that’s how much better than us they are – this is a round ball game (no half or quater balls here) so it’s going to pull some money in!

If Chelsea win by one then all bets are refunded and nobody gets paid.

Let’s have a look at the Referee:

Full name: Andre Marriner

Date of birth: 01-Jan-1971 (Age 40)

Place of birth: Birmingham

Resides: West Midlands

EPL Referee Since: 2004/2005

EPL Games to date: 117

Vermaelen drives a Nissan Fiiiiiiggaro…

It’s Andre Marriner again… you remember him; he’s the one that gave Liverpool 8 minutes injury time to upset our title challenge last season… then another 3 minutes on top of that just to be sure.

Let’s check out his stats!

Andre Marriner has had 11 games for Chelsea consisting of 6 wins, 3 draws and 2 losses.

Chelsea are currently in 3rd in Andre Marriner’s personal Points Per Game League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the English Premier, with an average of 1.91 PPG.

In Andre Marriner’s personal Handicap Swing League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the English Premier, Chelsea come 6th with an average positive swing of 0.18.

Chelsea are currently in 5th in Andre Marriner’s personal Booking’s Per Match League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the English Premier, with an overall average of 1.55 BPM.

In Andre Marriner’s personal Fouls Per Booking League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the English Premier, Chelsea come 13th with an overall average of 6.53 FPB.

We can see from the blue line on graph (above) that Chelsea have done quite well, in terms of PPG, under Andre up until the 2010/2011 season the 2007/2008 season was a in AHS terms also an under performance but nothing like as bad as 2010/2011. The FPB/BPM stats are slightly curious also in that Chelsea’s opposition look to get away with more in the Challenge than Chelsea – look at the 2008/2009 season where they got away with around 20 FPB and were hardly booked at all.

Above is a seasonal breakdown on how, when and where Chelsea took their bookings under Andre Marriner – you can see Marriner is trending to earlier bookings throughout the defence, midfield and attack.

Above is a seasonal breakdown on how, when and where Chelsea’s opposition took their bookings under Andre Marriner – now this is interesting, if we look to the 2009/2010 season (Chelsea’s best season so far under Marriner) we can see that he booked a lot the opposition’s defenders in the first half – other than that the bookings against Chelsea’s opposition look very late in the game, look at the midfield [red] line, you can see that they all average out in the final 10 minutes of the game.

Let’s move on now and see how Arsenal get on with Andre.

Andre Marriner has had 10 games for Arsenal consisting of 6 wins, 2 draws and 2 losses.

Arsenal are currently in 2nd in Andre Marriner’s personal Points Per Game League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the English Premier, with an average of 2.00 PPG.

In Andre Marriner’s personal Handicap Swing League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the English Premier, Arsenal come 5th with an average positive swing of 0.25.

Arsenal are currently in 1st in Andre Marriner’s personal Booking’s Per Match League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the English Premier, with an overall average of 1.00 BPM.

In Andre Marriner’s personal Fouls Per Booking League (for teams with a minimum of 5 matches played), for matches in the English Premier, Arsenal come 1st with an overall average of 10.50 FPB.

Looking first at our performance in the above graph we can see that we have already played a game under Marriner this season and lost – that was the Blackburn away fixture. Other than that our AHS/PPG figures don’t look too bad, although we did show an underperformance in the 2009/2010 season. At a glance, our FPB/BPM figures also look ok – in that we get booked less and commit more fouls than our opposition.

Above is a seasonal breakdown on how, when and where Arsenal took their bookings under Andre Marriner. We can see that recently we are trending to later bookings under Andre Marriner and curiously he seems to have developed a thing for booking substitutes under the last two seasons.

Above is a seasonal breakdown on how, when and where Arsenal’s opposition took their bookings under Andre Marriner. OK, we can see just how many more booking’s our opposition have taken under Marriner, there have been fat lines through the midfield and defence which were trending more and earlier until this season where they take a dive… and there’s that curious substitute booking thing again?

Let’s move on now to check out how Andre Marriner performs against selected teams in the EPL:

The stand out performers under Marriner are Manchester United – the zero point in 2007/2008 exists only because he had no games for them that season.

The Predictortron gives Chelsea a 0.383333 of a goal advantage… so hopefully we can come away from this with something.

I think today game is cumbersome for the two club. Currently the arsenal player Venpersi come to the apex of his quality. In addition to vanpersi, Garvinhio also a good communication with the team player. And all the player will be a good mental capacity to win the game and they are found in a good performance. Due to the above reason, In my point of view arsenal will be won Chelsea 3-1. Van score at least 2 goal in this game.

mhh…looks like we have odds stuck against us in a big match…AGAIN we got webb in a game that shall not be named,mike dean in the derby and now this guy against chelsea? lets hope we get something out of this game

It’s a tough call odds wise – put your punter hat on and put your bookie hat on… I would say a draw would be the most profitable if we factor in the European fixed odds betting. We’ll see how it plays out on the field.

The “Northern” and particular “Manchester” bias would lead I suspect to the best result as an Arsenal win if they are totally discounting Arsenal for the title. But as they are keen on Liverpool for 4th place the ideal result for the Northern bias would be a draw.

jbh that was on the cards until Terry slipped… I’m not doing the review so have my hands free but I noticed the ref giving it all to Chelsea the longer the game went on. The 3-3 was well an fine example on how a not given foul can have a major influence on a game.

IN YOUR FACE!!!! What a game, what a performance…

I think the one man team will be on the agenda after this… who cares 🙂 🙂 🙂

I must say that even when we were behind on the scoreboard I still felt a strange confident feeling that we just would win it.
The only thing that disturbed this feeling was the way Marinner was trying gently to disturb the balance.

But the way we were fighting was just amazing. I think the whole team was really committed, focused and even the mistakes we made didn’t seem to affect the way we played and wanted to play.

I will wait for ref review article, but I think that Mariner was right about giving only yellow to Wojciech. He wasn’t last man in defense and it wasn’t real goal scoring opportunity…hovewer, I was scared like a little girl after his start, never been curious about the colors as Mariner did put his hand in the pocket waiting for the card 🙂

Anyway, Chelsea scored after they committed clear foul. So, we can tell we are even.

Great great game. Not only that we won scoring 5 on the shitty bridge but it was real pleasure to watch clean total football.

Great game. Towards the end it seemed Chelsea could get away with anything, while at the same time getting free kicks for fouls that were not there. And for a few minutes after the Mata goal, Arsenal seemed to misplace many passes. But once RVP scored the 4-3, the passing play was back and Arsenal dominated the game again like they had been for most of the match. A deserved win.

I’m going to predict the AAA will spin this as Chelsea in crisis, focus on Santos having a poor game going backwards and Ealcott only getting one goal. The other thing is they might point out that if you play well enough the ref has to go too far to affect the outcome for referee bias to matter.
Personally, I’m annoyed we conceded three but Chelsea are a very good attacking side afterall.

Sturridge could have punished us but was wasteful. Happy Drogba was suspended because he would have made the match much more difficult for us.
But hey, we were without Song and Gervinho for 3 premier league matches.

I think I saw a tackle from behind, but I am not sure who it was on and I think it was Gervinho brought down by the last defender, early in the second half. Also there was about a 20 minute period where the ref blew for every free kick in Chelsea’s favour but ignored their fouls on us.

Lastly I don’t think RVP or Ivanovic should of got yellow cards, they should of instead been given a warning and some serious words to calm down.

Mediation – would you like to write a prediction column for Untold? Quite extraordinary. (Phil your job is safe – I am not looking to replace you, despite your 1-1 prediction which was just a little bit out.

IMPORTANT WIN.TEAM SHOWED A LOT OF CHARACTER. THE LATE GREAT COLLEGE BASKETBALL COACH JOHN WOODEN DEFINED CHARACTER AS BEING AT YOUR BEST WHEN YOUR BEST IS REALLY NEEDED. TODAY THE ARSENAL SHOWED WHAT THEY ARE MADE OF. ALL THE AAA AND MEDIA WHO WERE SCREAMING GLOOM, DOOM, AND RELEGATION SHOULD SHUT THE HELL UP. THE CREAM ALWAYS RISES TO THE TOP. OUR FEARLESS LEADER KNOWS THIS. THE XENOPHOBIC BRITSH MEDIA WONT ADMIT THIS, BUT IF WENGER WAS FROM THEIR SHORES, THEY WOULD BE ERECTING STATUES OF HIM AND CLAMORING FOR HIM TO BE THE NATIONAL TEAM MANAGER FOR LIFE. THERE’S ONLY ONE ARSENE WENGER

Topovacha, All
Regarding Szez’s yellow card (instead of red card), I’m glad you then pointed out that “Anyway, Chelsea scored after they committed clear foul. So, we can tell we are even.” So far, I’ve been searching for any media coverage that mentions Chelski (blatantly) fouling against our man only moments before Mata’s goal. So far I can’t find that mentioned. So far, it seems a nice big “hole” in the coverupage. If anyone spots mention of that non-call – the uncalled foul – please mention it. In that silence lurks the concealed (for now) bias – media and ref – that abides against us. Up with Riley’s breakfast! Go Gunners!

Walter, Refs, Ref Reviewer to be,
Arsenal TV’s two online presenters were screaming about the blatancy of the foul against us before Mata’s strike. That non-call – if it’s as clear from your POV as it was from the presenters – could well be a major exhibit in ref Marriner’s failed attempt to achieve a draw. Do you see it as a blatant non-call? Beyond this one call, do you see a pattern in the last half-hour say, to indicate that Marriner either trying for a draw or having us lose?

Judging by the TV highlights he got two big decisions wrong. Our keeper should have gone and their third goal should never have stood. At this level, referees should not be getting any big decisions wrong. I wager that whoever referees Tuesday’s game will be a far more competent referee whoo will make far fewer errors. Apart from Clattenburg, it is hard to find a premier league referee who is of a consistently high standard.

I was watching the match on ESPN in the States. There were two commentators, Steve MacNanaman and (I think) Adrian Healey. At first, McNanaman mentioned the foul but pretended it was not a foul–it was a pathetic effort, something like, “he never fouled him, just sort of eased him out of the way.” But Healey (who was much more fair and sensible than MacNanaman throughout the match) called it a foul and over the course of about five minutes had MacNanaman admitting it as such. It was an interesting moment. I can’t stand MacNanaman, who’s a fool and who obviously does not like Arsenal, but once confronted with a sensible argument, had to begrudgingly call a spade a spade. I wonder if the voice in his earpiece gave him permission…

El Gringo,
Great observation on MacNanaman in the ESPN dynamic duo. And speaking of earpieces, I’m just musing over whether Howard Webb might have been whispering “sweet nothings” in Marriner’s earpiece in an on-site live tutorial on how to try and micromanage the last 30 minutes and produce anything but an Arsenal victory. Just musing, mind you…